Choosing off campus

Two groups of juniors vying for housing in Pierson College’s lower court next fall have launched a rigorous campaign, soliciting votes from their classmates using posters and e-mails. Last spring, the battle for the Saybrook College’s 12-Pack suite was less organized, but still ended in more than one man-tear. The housing lottery blights the Yale calendar every April for all students planning to live on-campus.

But each year, 20 to 30 percent of upperclassmen ­— or roughly 600 students — forgo the uncomfortable social politics of housing season, leaving their residential colleges altogether, Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske ’74 said. Although that number has declined significantly since the 1990s, when an average of roughly 900 students moved off-campus every year, it represents a group of students who choose to carve out homes on the edges of the Yale bubble rather than within it.

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While the decision is largely socially motivated, an off-campus move hinges on the question of cost for many students. $10,700 for this year’s room and board at Yale may not be cheap, but it’s relatively consistent. Moving off-campus puts this money in students’ pockets, but exposes some Yalies to an unfamiliar level of financial freedom and an opportunity to save or to spend excessively.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Because off-campus students are geographically — and often emotionally — detached from their colleges, less time is spent in common rooms, dining halls and butteries and more time leaking cash in coffee shops, restaurants and bars.

“Off-campus life tends to cater more to those from moneyed backgrounds,” said Alex Kain ’09, who has lived off-campus for two years.

Still, students who are on financial aid are still eligible for receiving aid off-campus, Director of Student Financial Services Caesar Storlazzi said. The aid money is simply transferred to off-campus facilities, such as landlords and gas companies, in exchange for a smaller Yale tab.

The relative cost of on- and off-campus housing is largely determined by rent, which ranges vastly by building and area. Houses and apartment buildings on the west side of campus, along Howe Street and Edgewood Avenue, for example, typically have low-end monthly rents, from $400 to $600 a person. The rents in other apartment buildings, like the Taft, the Oxford, the Cambridge, the Dinmore and Orleton Court are usually a couple hundred dollars higher and can reach into the quadruple digits.

Off-campus students, who usually find summer subletters, pay nine months of rent per year. In comparison, the annual cost of Yale housing, divided by nine months, comes to a monthly rate of $650. But since the cost of utilities is $100 per month, on average, off-campus students with rents over $550 generally spend more than those living on-campus.

Food, of course, complicates the bottom line. It can either cut expenses or stabilize living costs, depending on one’s dining preferences.

On campus, the full 21-meal plan is mandatory for freshmen, while other on-campus students can opt instead for 14 meals a week with $150 of flex points per semester. Both plans have the same $4,860 annual price tag.

The savings from turning down the meal plan — which breaks down to roughly $23 a day — can be significant for off-campus students who stick to a rigid dietary regime.

In an average day, David Thier ’09, an Edgewood Avenue resident, said he consumes one can of black beans, one onion, an assortment of spices, an eighth of a block of Monterey Jack and two tortillas. Thier’s cheap calories keep his living costs low.

Most students, however, admitted that they cook less than they initially thought they would — or could — given their busy schedules. And the endless eating out and ordering in, many agreed, can add up to a hefty sum.

“Its hardly the endless circle of dinner parties that we were envisioning. Lots of Main Garden,” said Edgewood Avenue resident Jeff White ’09, referring to the Chinese restaurant around the corner. (White is a former photography editor for the News.)

Still, off-campus students who miss the convenience and quantity of Yale’s dining halls can attend Sunday family night dinners, purchase a 5-meal-a-week plan or bursar their meals. Many students interviewed even admitted to leaving dining halls with bags full of fruit and napkin-wrapped sandwiches to last them at home.

NEIGHBORHOODS OF CULTURE

Unequal in quality but equal in cost, Yale’s dormitories are a socioeconomic equalizer. Many on-campus students suggested that the diversity of their college communities is often lost by moving off-campus. Ben Margines ’10 said he would never abandon his on-campus culture or the “grab bag of friends” he has lived with in his last three years at Yale.

“The continuous social interaction that on-campus housing provides is the epitome of college-life,” he said.

In contrast, class differences are starkly apparent off-campus, said Kathryn Olivarius ’11, who is moving into the Lynwood next fall. “When it comes to the Oxford, the Cambridge and the Taft, there is a definite class divide,” Olivarius said.

While social class can be more noticeable off-campus, Thier said, many students live well below their means. “There are a lot of wealthy people slumming it,” he said.

Ultimately, Thier said, one’s social group, not bank account, determines one’s off-campus address. Off-campus dwellers, he said, tend to locate where their junior or senior friends lived the year before, creating neighborhoods of culture as opposed to wealth.

Beyond financial considerations, a dozen off-campus students said they enjoy greater privacy off-campus, distance from the fast pace of Yale’s campus life and, simply, a more secure sense of home.

Streeter Phillips ’10, who rents an apartment in the Oxford, calls the off-campus life “bittersweet” — both liberating and isolating. Off-campus students, he said, are inevitably removed from their residential colleges, which are one of the most unique and celebrated aspects of the Yale undergraduate experience.

Still, Master of Saybrook College Edward Kamens said most off-campus students remain fully engaged in their colleges, adding that “the college masters and deans do all that can be done to ensure that most students living in the college is the preferred, default, and very best option.”

Inevitably, the off-campus groups form a kind of “intimate community,” as Lynwood Place resident Allen Sanchez ’10 put it.

Belonging to this outside community, however, means forgoing the custodial services and security gates of the University.

Many off-campus students grumbled of general maintenance issues, such as malfunctioning plumbing, dishwashers and air conditioning.

Kain, a resident of Lynwood Place, noticed that a ping-pong ball placed on his floor immediately rolled to one side of his room. “Our house is sinking on one side,” he deduced.

A door in Kain’s Lynwood bedroom leads out to a parking lot. On two different evenings, he said, uninvited strangers tried to open it with accompanying shouts of “Frank.”